


Answer B

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-10
Updated: 2005-07-10
Packaged: 2019-05-15 15:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14792979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: It's seventeen months since he made the decision that led to this, and now he knows what his funeral is going to look like.





	Answer B

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Answer B**

**by: Delightfully Eccentric**

**Character(s):** Jed, Senior Staff  
**Rating:** YTEEN  
**Disclaimer:** The West Wing characters and histories aren't mine, and are used here for love, not money.  
**Summary:** It's seventeen months since he made the decision that led to this, and now he knows what his funeral is going to look like.  
**Author's Note:** Part of the '5 Things That Never Happened to Jed Bartlet' Series 

It's November. 

It's seventeen months since he made the decision that led to this, and now he knows what his funeral is going to look like. 

It's been all day – begun unnecessarily early for a day during which he hasn't as much to do as he needs to do – and he can't shake the analogy, faulty as it is. This is the wake, isn't it? 

The funeral is set for January, the twentieth. It's something of an anniversary. 

But that will be short on mourners. Long on winners. 

It won't be about him. 

There are people, friends, for whom today is the prelude to a celebration. 

It's easier not to think of them (soon it will be inevitable, soon they will be everywhere, soon they will be the world) and to accept Abbey's words of reassurance without confronting the flush of nervous excitement in her cheek. 

Those people are not these, surrounding him now. This feels like the last meeting. They feel the same and he's suddenly angry. 

It feels like tomorrow he won't be entitled to Sam's tentative, "Sir?" 

He has until January. 

He has until then to lie down and wait for them to close the lid. 

"What's next?" 

His eyes flit between them, glancing at each other. All wondering the same thing. 

They've had offers, they must have. He wonders if any of them knows yet what's after this, and if they'd tell him if they did. 

"Not much," Leo says. Old faithful, he's had enough practice at defusing charged situations. For this place, nothing's enough. 

Abbey thinks this is for the best. 

Sam looks to Leo and proceeds on his nod. 

"I was just asking, how was Manchester?" 

Jed turns his own gaze to Leo with a raised eyebrow that says, 'So, by not much, you mean absolutely nothing whatsoever?' 

And bespoke-jacketed shoulders shuffle, deadpanning, 'Well, I did hear a whisper in the halls that they're electing a new world leader, but nothing for you to bother about.' 

"It was fine, Sam. How was it supposed to be?" 

"Just... voting and all. It went... okay?" 

"It wasn't my first time." 

He doesn't tell about the moment in the polling booth when he was tempted to mischief. They would take it too seriously, or not at all. 

"Okay." 

Sam's the puppy with two uses for a President in a mood: a look from him oftentimes can chase the storm clouds, failing that, he's tender for the kicking. 

Jed's decision might be for the best, for Sam. 

"Don't worry, I filled the right box." 

His voice drops so they can pretend not to hear his assertion: "No way Hoynes wins New Hampshire." 

Josh looks away from Sam, to CJ, who doesn't look back. The fingernail she's picking at is cracked. 

She's twitching to say something she's been told she mustn't. Toby's elbow is a warning against her own, though his dark eyes haven't strayed from Jed. 

None of the others – save from constant Leo – can be so unflinching. 

They should be dressed in black. Josh and Toby should have torn ribbons. 

He doesn't tell about the moment in the booth when his hand started shaking, or that he awoke this morning into dizziness. He doesn't say maybe his body would be stronger if he'd based his seventeen-months-old decision on something other than mortality. 

He rolls a pen between his fingers. 

"In other news?" Directed at CJ. 

She flutters for a moment, caught thinking something she shouldn't, and repeats Leo – the words Leo spoke aloud. 

Josh comes to her rescue with a tragic tale of Donna's ballot, trying for a chuckle. He earns a smattering of laughter, forced and resented. 

Toby shows off two sets of remarks, congratulating John on his theft, alternatively commiserating with his inadequacy. But Toby puts both more charitably, at least on paper and at least in front of Jed. 

Toby hasn't told him the truth since a night in this office more seventeen months ago. 

He reaches to adjust his glasses and is surprised to find them just where they should be. The words on the page continue to dance, and not with Toby's brilliance. 

He claps his hands to his knees. 

The remarks go flying. CJ bends to retrieve them and looks up from the floor with wide eyes at the difficulty with which he unclenches his fingers. 

He has a flash of her kneeling at a graveside with a thorny white rose, and the moment passes. 

He nods in the direction of the desk – hardly his any more, his for hardly any longer. She turns her eyes to it and deposits the pages there. 

She keeps looking at it, even as she murmurs, "Are you feeling all right, Mr. President?" 

There's mockery in the address. CJ didn't put it there. 

"Like Caesar on the ides of March," and it's wonderfully inappropriate, but he feels like blaming them. 

They'll survive when he's in the ground. 

They all look over their shoulders when he dismisses them. 

He pretends not to notice them, or the empty desk they file past outside his door. 

There's no use in pretending the disappointment he gave birth to seventeen months ago is in the past. It takes form today. 

He pretends that is why his hands are shaking. 

* 

He massages his temples. If he can fool them into developing an ache, that might fool the pills he's taken into working. 

The pages Toby typed are strewn across the desk. He's memorised the one he'll never have to read, and been curious as to whether Toby retains copies of the work that doesn't find a use. 

It's remarkable work – either an out-loud advertisement of his services or, more likely, sheer defiance. No one can tell from the words that they hardly matter. 

He's made a few stops, smiled and greeted. He's exchanged inanities down the phone with John more than once. 

Abbey has been sliding in and out, each excuse thinner than the last – the latest was an invitation to join a pool Amy Gardner brought to her attention. He wonders what she and Amy talked about. 

He ought to reassure her it's seventeen months too late to change his mind. 

He gets to his feet and rocks there for a moment. The office is still oval. 

When he steps into the middle of the room, he's still standing on a seal. 

He takes a wander around the corridors. 

He sees Josh dash between rooms, running either from Donna or to her. 

It's quiet outside Sam's office. There's the hum of a television, tuned to voices discussing shock numbers coming out of districts Jed can't remember giving much thought to. 

Next door the voices are less tinny, slightly louder yet trying not to strain the silence. They're well-worn with the lines of an argument repeated over and unresolved. CJ and Toby, burning the tension on each other. 

CJ's mouth freezes over when she glimpses him over Toby's shoulder. 

He doesn't disturb them. 

Various assistants murmur, 'Mr. President,' and bob their heads as he passes through. 

He circles back to Leo, trying the front door for a change. 

He's been doing that, lately, testing out the corners of the building he's never had occasion to visit. 

Margaret gets halfway through asking if he has an appointment before he takes her by the hand and pulls her to her feet. 

She looks surprised, pleased and disapproving by turns. 

"You can dance, right?" 

He pulls her in a circle. He's feeling trivial. 

"There's an ancient dance called the Politician. Hasn't been performed in these parts for many a long year, but it's very straightforward." 

Her eyes are impossibly large, so much space vacant. 

He doesn't think she's ever seen in him where all the fuss comes from, but he can't fault the zeal with which she's waved the flag Leo placed in her hand. 

He can hear footsteps, Leo reacting to the commotion. 

"Three steps forward, two steps back, sidestep, sidestep, then turn around." 

The joke wasn't funny, but his manner and latterly his position are usually enough to garner a polite laugh. 

Margaret isn't like that. 

Leo ushers him in, drawing Margaret affectionate daggers. 

"John's doing well." Leo, stating the obvious that has to be stated. 

"Yes." 

Jed relaxes his hands into his pockets. 

"Better than we hoped for, even." 

Oh yes, there's a warning in that. Jed isn't wavering, right now. 

He glares. 

So what, the Democrats are going to keep the White House. That's why it was Answer B all along. 

Margaret appears in the doorway. 

"Sir. The First Lady is looking for you." 

He looks from Margaret to Leo. 

"Excuse me. I have to go convince Abbey I'm not going to chain myself to the gates." 

Margaret steps forward, then half a step back. She won't have to be awkward much longer. 

"Sir. I get it. The Politician." 

Leo rolls his eyes and is about to send her packing but Jed waves him off. 

"It was... funny. Ha-ha." 

He's never seen anyone who could look so serious when she's laughing. But he notices, when her face softens at the expression on his, that Margaret has a very beautiful, too- elusive, smile. 

"I didn't get it before because I thought you were talking about yourself," she continues. "But you're not like that." 

He wonders when he became so used to hearing himself referred to in the past tense that he loves Margaret for not following the trend. 

He goes to kiss her on the cheek but the gesture is too tried and cheap and too like she says he isn't. 

So he says, "Thank you," and hopes he hasn't spent so many years practising sounding sincere that he's forgotten how to do it when he means it. 

* 

Abbey invited Leo for a late meal but even today Leo's distractions manage to be pressing enough to make him skip the first course. 

Jed worries his food until every piece is rearranged on the plate. He lifts the fork to his mouth from time to time and waves it around as he talks. 

Abbey purses her lips. 

"Someone put a lot of sweat into cooking that," and it's the lecture she still gives their kids. 

"Someone got paid a very decent wage for cooking that." 

His snippiness wouldn't have been tolerated from the kids. 

"Oh, it's all about the money, isn't it." 

He doubts he's the only one who doesn't know what the conversation is about, except that it isn't money or food. 

He examines the parts of her he can see behind the table. Her arms, tapering to fists clenched on either side of her plate. The dress, imperial blue - a good colour but no amount of word association games will make it her colour. Her chest, covered more than is her custom, straining against the crushed velvet. 

It's tragic that answer B hasn't made her any the less fearful. 

He looks up to her chin (determinedly not wobbling), past her lips (heavily painted). 

His vision clouds as he reaches her eyes. It's easy to ignore it, because he knows exactly how her eyes must look. He knows their defiance better than he knows the back of his hand (he has had more occasion to look at her eyes), and he's still unconscious of what they're defying, other than the fear. 

He shakes his head from side to side; he can't think about not being able to see her eyes. 

"There must be things you're going to miss." 

Her chin tilts abruptly. 

"Abbey. It must bother you a little bit." 

"Jed." 

The weakness in her voice takes him by surprise and he would think about it more if the room would settle in one place. 

He finally notices the fork clattering against his plate. It takes a little longer to realise that the fork's still attached to his hand, that the flaw causing the noise isn't the crockery's. 

His vision becomes clear, and with it the realisation that there's nothing left he can do to alleviate Abbey's fears. Followed closely by the realisation that it was worth betting everything in the attempt. 

Her hand has joined his from across the table. 

He squeezes, tentatively at first then stronger when he confirms he is capable of it. 

"It's okay. I'm – it's passed." 

She's working her fingers between each of his as if to test them individually. 

She's talking but he's hearing only the defiance of the fear, when Leo's at his back, where he wasn't before. 

"Mr. President." 

Abbey withdraws, so he must be okay a little. 

"Leo!" He's too jovial but they're used to that. "Sit. Eat. Be merry. Reassure Abbey that Chef's hard work didn't go to waste." 

"Thank you, sir, but..." 

Always so formal when Jed isn't going to like what he says. 

"Yes?" 

"Word is Ritchie's calling Hoynes within the half hour." 

Abbey flutters to her feet, pleading the need to fix her hair. What else she can possibly do to it? More likely her eye makeup. 

"Finish your dinner," Leo says, even as Jed pushes the plate into the centre of the table. 

He steps out and in front, as usual. As has become usual. He wonders if, after January, things will revert to what used to be normal. 

He talks over his shoulder. 

"I'm ready." 

* 

He strides directly through the Oval. Along the way a string of followers fall into line behind Leo. 

"Sir?" 

"We're going to Leo's. We're not doing this in here." 

He can picture them glancing at each other behind his back. 

Leo takes the visitors' seat; Jed settles behind Leo's desk where there's space to fidget and to conceal his hands if he needs to. 

The staff hover around the walls. They don't even have clipboards or folders to fiddle with. 

"So," he says, "What did everyone do today?" 

Leo emits a silent sigh; Toby raises his eyebrows; Josh looks at CJ, who's choking on a humourless chuckle. Sam looks like he's about to attempt an answer but Jed waves him down. 

"Let's try another one. Everyone okay?" 

"We're fine, sir." 

Sam makes him believe it. Josh's face doesn't quite. Toby is impassive. CJ won't look at him, and it's a bad day when she has to resort to that to hide herself. 

"Good," he says. 

The chatterboxes on Leo's television are considerably more animated about this election than the people in the room. 

"The decision that brought us to today is the second hardest I've ever had to make. The hardest was the one that brought us to this building, and then Leo pushed me over the cliff so I had to swim." 

They look to Leo and back to him, eyes flitting over each other on the way. It's safest not to linger. 

"This one wasn't Leo, though. I think you all know Leo would have jumped off the other cliff." 

Leo opens his mouth to protest but Jed's expression restrains him. 

He's too occupied with looking at Leo to see Toby's arm anchoring itself firmly around CJ's or the furious flick of her hair as she turns to shake him off. 

"It was a decision I had to make," he continues, staring idly at his ring. 

"It wasn't a decision, it was a mistake!" 

Tremulous shadow alerts him to her presence looming over the desk 

"You know fine well it was a mistake! Everything about you this past year and a half..." 

Josh is at her side muttering her name in a blend of command and plea. Toby is trying to get in her line of vision. 

"It was a mistake and you only made it because you were scared!" 

He's thankful for her that she's never been scared enough to know what a good reason it can be. He never wants her to know. 

She swats Josh like a fly, and ignores Toby completely. 

"Could we please, just... Could we just stop pretending? It's not your presidency that made you sick! This was a mistake. Please?" 

Leo stands up. 

She glares wildly; she doesn't seem to know where to direct it. 

"He gave up his right to muzzle me when he gave up everything else." 

He's sure she doesn't know who she's talking to. 

Leo's mouth is a hard line about to snap. But he gave up the right to let Leo fight his battles at the same time. 

"I'm the President right now, am I not?" 

"Sure. Fine. I'll wait until January. And then I will damn well have my say." 

Her hands braced against the desk rival his in terms of unsteadiness. 

"It wasn't my presidency that made me sick," he says. 

Everyone freezes. 

"And giving it up isn't going to save my life." 

There is a general slump around the room. 

"I don't know yet if I made a mistake on this, CJ. I don't know what's going to happen next, in the world, on my farm, in the office next door. I know I had to make a decision." 

She leans back. Her hands come up off the desk. One rakes through her hair, but he doubts that anyone will notice today that her hair is a mess. 

It's unclear whether she's going to subside, burst into tears, or throw something at his head. 

"Sir," Sam interrupts in a respectful tone. 

Everyone looks around. 

Sam points at the television. At the same time Leo's phone rings. 

The person on the other end is too breathless to identify himself before gasping, "They've called it." 

The figures on the television swim into crystal clear focus. 

Jed finishes the thought. 

"For Hoynes." 

* 

Full circle, another press conference. 

Skewed circle. He's ashamed of how much he resents being the supporting act, and surprised he doesn't resent it more. 

Toby's lines trip off his tongue as if he paid more attention than he thought he did. He sees them - and all the brilliance Toby's been spinning for seventeen months - for what they are, finally, and doesn't know how he managed to stay oblivious to such a display of loyalty for so long. 

John, twirling in the flash flares, deigning to move in his direction. John, trying to swallow his elation in the three steps to him. John, stretching his arm out to shake hands too soon, so the photographs will show an expanse of nothing between them. (Accident? Design? Unconscious whip-smart instincts sniffing out a prophetic visual?) 

John's existence, the question mark hanging over his decision to run in the first place. The stain on Leo's napkin. 

The flush in his face will be attributed to excitement and the heat from the cameras. 

At the side of the stage Josh talks into Abbey's ear before she sweeps forward in a style that will be too brash even for her character within a few months. 

Hoynes's wife is shrunk to nothingness beside her. The pictures of the face-kisses and vigorous embrace will have two faces, two torsos, four arms – but it will all be Abbey. Abbey's heat for the performance, cold for the substance; Abbey's indifference to Suzanne, passion for doing him proud. All showing in every fluffed out hair on her head and every contorted line on her face. All the visual he needs. 

John's hands, the one grasped in his and the one clamping down on top of the conjoined hands, are sweatier than he'd have thought. The excitement. The cameras. 

He looks over John's shoulder as the hands pump away, out of time to the victory song over the speakers. 

Josh and Toby out of sight of the audience, where they've always been unless they were needed to take a hit. Shoulders touching. Sombre. Leaving home-sombre rather than funeral-sombre. 

His daughters aren't there. They were little enough impressed by his presidency. 

Unless he takes into account CJ, yards away from the boys, with her arms braced against the wall, pinning one of Hoynes's men in place. Arguing about him, he supposes. 

Sam is close by, talking easily with someone sporting an even larger version of the Hoynes/Arkin ribbon they're all wearing. Probably passing on tips. 

Leo isn't with them. 

He tries to disengage his hands after an appropriate interval – an appropriate number of smiles and nods in the direction of each network – but John clings, instinct not failed but frozen. 

"Hey," he says, not a stage whisper. "Most of the time, you're going to be good." 

He remembers he means it at the same time as he remembers he's good, most of the time. 

The grip mellows, over the course of a few hundred shutter clicks, into being undone. 

CJ strides on-stage, having brushed her successor aside (after all, her guy is President right now) and rescues him – he suspects it won't be the last time any more than it is the first. 

He makes something like a graceful exit with his arm around Abbey, pulling her face into his neck. She reaches up to cling to his hand at her shoulder. He doesn't think it's about testing for steadiness. 

The crowd doesn't swell or deflate with his departure. Wiping John's sweat on the back of his pants, he doesn't care. 

Parts of him have been to a funeral. 

Tight but real smiles from Josh and Toby. Spontaneous applause from Sam, who just might have had a drink. Dampness on his neck. 

He has to turn to view CJ, a step behind, and her downward-cast eyes as she slides a tissue into Abbey's hand (they are surrounded by the things Abbey will miss). 

At his funeral, he and CJ won't be able to express mutual forgiveness with a wink on his side and pinkening cheeks on hers, so it's as well it's already covered. 

"Where's Leo?" 

"On the phone." Josh would know. 

He expects to find Leo congratulating people who didn't do anything, thanking people who only got in the way. He expects to find Leo believing he has to do what no one else from the retiring team is going to. 

He hovers in the doorway because he hasn't long left to watch Leo work. 

A man he doesn't recognise is on Leo's TV, earnestly explaining how he won the election for Hoynes. 

"Gotta go, Mal. He's here." 

Leo swings round in his seat and smiles. 

"She says maybe you'll find time to come visit her class now." 

"Her class won't know who I am now." 

"Sure they will. You're Ms. O'Brien's old dad's old buddy." 

And it's clear that Leo's the one Mal is pestering to talk to the class, and that Leo's playing a familiar game in passing it off to him. It's clear that, rather than disappoint the kids and his daughter, Leo will wind up being the one who goes and tells the kids stories they don't understand. 

It's clear that he didn't let Leo down as far as he thought he did. 

"I'm told there's a party of some kind." 

Leo nods. Jed wonders when Leo last went to a party he didn't have to work, realises that's what Leo believes parties are for. 

"I thought we could get the staff together." 

Leo nods, slower, and stands. The two face each other for a moment that will seem longer in memory. 

The voices on the television vanish with the click of a button. 

It's time for plan B, if he can invent one. 


End file.
